


Summersong

by Anonymous



Series: Himling Extras [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Durin Family, Durin Family Feels, Gen, Guessing Games, Inspired by Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:14:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26177038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Fili and Kili offer a gift to their mother in the form of a guessing-game.
Relationships: Dís & Fíli & Kíli (Tolkien)
Series: Himling Extras [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913266
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16
Collections: GatheringFiKi - Secret Admirers 2020





	Summersong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [msilverstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/msilverstar/gifts).



> A gift to MSilverstar for GatheringFiKi Secret Admirer 2020! Enjoy!

_Mother, you sit here,_ said Kíli, patting the cushion of his mother’s best armchair.

 _What have you done to my sitting room?_ Dís gasped. It appeared that all her furniture had—well, _disappeared_. 

As her eyes adjusted to the light _(only three candles for room with no fire? really?)_ she realized that it had been pushed to the four walls, leaving only the chair stranded in the center of the floor like Erebor on its wide plain.

 _Go on, Mother._ Fíli’s eyes brimmed with mischief as he rosined his bow. _Indulge us._

Dís did as she was bidden but looked askance at the shadowy bulk that was Dwalin, tuning his viol in the corner. _I usually look to you and Balin for good sense, but here I find you both swept up in this foolery._

 _G_ _et comfortable, cousin,_ ordered Dwalin.

 _You shan’t regret it._ Balin, positioned catty-corner across the room from his brother, was naught but a voice in the darkness to Dís. Most intriguingly, he had not brought his own viol. What did it mean?

As soon as she had settled herself, Dís felt a quilt tucked in around her knees and a kiss land upon her cheek. Kíli’s whisper – _Close your eyes –_ soothed her misgivings, but not for long. All the candles went out at once!

 _What are you doing now?!_ she demanded, wrinkling her nose at the reek of melted wax and sooty smoke.

 _Ssssh_ , came the response, followed by a thump and a little cry: _Aiee!_ Someone had just stubbed their toe in the dark, and as far as Dís was concerned, it served them right.

Silence at last overtook the room, and then it began.

One deep note on Dwalin’s viol, plucked with a finger, ebbing away into nothingness like a drop of water into a vast pool.

The same note again, followed by another of a slightly higher pitch but thumbed more softly. They faded together into the quiet, and Dís began to forget the smell of smoke.

Both notes again, in the same order. Then a third. Again, again, again, three notes, each at a different tempo. Droplets, falling without hurry, falling without end.

Now one violin note, bowed so carefully and slowly that Dís imagined that she could actually hear each individual hair of the bow stroking the string.

Again, but now echoed by a second violin—the same note, bowed even softer, as if from further away. Over and over, now louder, now softer, from the left, from the right— the first stroke sweet and unbroken, the second lagging behind with a gentle reverb dying away into the distance. It occurred to Dís that her sons were walking around her in a circle, taking turns veering close and then drifting away so that the sound of their fiddles came from every direction, weaving her into the center of an unknown spell…

_Mama…_

When the whisper came, she started a little; when another voice echoed it a beat behind, she grasped the edge of quilt with growing excitement. An echo; they were building an echo.

_Mama…_

Then she heard it, from Balin’s corner: the plink of a metal tine against… a bell? A glass goblet? No… but she _knew_ this sound, knew it in her bones, or so it seemed to her in the darkness. A joyful sound, a childhood sound, penetrating, reverberating… a song only one instrument could make, in only one place, her beloved Blue Mountains…

_Mama…_

When it came again – that sweet, vibrant, silvery chime – it brought a flash of realization, of recognition. Dís knew this sound because she herself had _made_ this sound, had taught her own sons to make it, years and years ago, amid the sound of dripping water and soft voices and echoes. Selenite. Strike it, and it makes music, music that fills—

 _The summer caverns!_ she cried, clapping her hands. _You’re playing me the summer caverns, oh, you clever things!_

Four laughs – basso profundo, two baritones and a tenor – assured her that she was right.


End file.
